I know that education and learning can be boring sometimes. Endless facts and names, numbers and scales, lines and tables. But what if I tell you that there is a way to learn about things, without even noticing and having fun. Yes it really does exist. The solution is books. But not any books of course. If you start to read any science book you will be back to facts and scales, lines and tables…yeah you know how this goes on. No!! I tell you that there are books that aren’t heavy science books but novels of adventure and heroes, tragedies and drama that teach you things by hiding them in great stories. Some of those books I will show you today, but feel free to explore and discover more of them.
Percy Jackson (Rick Riordan)
- Follow young hero Percy who turns out to be the son of the god of the seas Poseidon. In his adventures he needs to travel the ancient world of Greek mythology. Just by following his adventures you explore with him all the old tales and gain so much knowledge about ancient Greek and their Religion of believing in many gods, each one with it’s own purpose and intentions. If you follow Percy even further and read the sequel to the original book series “Heroes of Olympus” you will learn about the roman equivalent to the Greek religion. Their similarities and differences, a conflict as old as time. You will learn about the roman empire, its rulers and fight strategies. You will dive into Greek mythology even deeper and discover Gaia the mother of everything and her terrifying children “the giants” created to slay the gods. This author gives you so much information about ancient Greek and the relationships of the ancient gods and you wont even notice because you consume every page, because you want to figure out how our heroes can save the world or if they maybe cannot?
The author Rick Riordan has written similar book series about the ancient Egypt called “the Cater Cane Chronicles” and a book series about the northern mythology called “Magnus Chase”. Both are also very good stories and teach you about their worlds and mythology.
Level 4
With this book series Andreas Schlüter has created a very fun and clever way to educate children about the dangers of the internet or science. In one book the children get sucked into a computer game and in an other they get cloned and their clones wake up in the future without knowing that they are actually clones. Schlüter’s books deal with problems and ethical questions that come to the surface when dealing with future inventions and the freedom of science. Five children named Ben, Frank, Kim, Miriam and Thomas. The children get sucked into weird circumstances and encounters, facing problems and finding creative ways to solve them, often confronted by ethical questions that get resolved in a good way making it easy for young children to understand the issue and solutions. It is a great way to start reading if you are more into science fiction than fantasy and learning a lot on the way.
Sophie’s world (Jostein Gaarder)
A young girl named Sophie is receiving a mysterious letter about philosophy. Through this coincidence Sophie becomes the student of an old philosophy professor. Soon they realize that they are both just fictional characters, doomed to live under the control of their creators. To fight back against this Creator, Sophie learns more and more about philosophy. But will it be enough to escape the hands of the controlling Creator? If you follow Sophie in her journey through the world of philosophy you will learn so much about values, ethical thinking and the possible questions to some of the most asked questions in life. And all of this is wrapped in a story about a girl that is only fighting for her freedom, if though in a very unconventional way.